Female teachers transmit math anxiety to female students

A new study shows that female elementary school teachers' anxiety about math …

Girls often believe themselves to be bad at math, in accordance with gender stereotyping, and often experience high levels of anxiety about the subject. That anxiety appears to be driven by social influences, and may be vanishing in early education. Still, identifying its causes could help eliminate it at later stages of education, and prevent it from making a reappearance in young girls.

A new study suggests that elementary school may be a breeding ground for this anxiety. The study found that when elementary school teachers, who are primarily female, displayed a high level of anxiety about math, that skittishness was transmitted to their female students. Those students who spent a year with a math-phobic teacher displayed lower math achievement and an increased belief in stereotypes about female mathematical ability.

As the authors note, anxiety about doing math, particularly in a public forum such as calculating the tip for a restaurant check, has long been known to be an impediment to math performance, independent of quantitative skill. Elementary education majors have been found to be particularly afraid of math—more so than any other college major—but often have little chance to overcome this fear because the math requirements of their programs are usually minimal.

While their education may be lacking somewhat in math, that doesn't mean they'll never have to deal with it again, which turns out to be problematic, as the authors find that teachers' anxieties about math, even at elementary level, turn out to have consequences for students.

The study in question assessed the math anxiety of 17 first- and second-grade female teachers from a large urban midwestern school district, as well as the math achievement of their students (52 boys and 65 girls). Students' ideas about gender and academic stereotypes were accounted for, including their thoughts on the common belief that girls are good at reading, while boys are good at math.

The students and teachers were tested for the first three months of the school year, and then again during the last two months. During the first three months of school, there was no relation between the teachers' anxiety and the students' achievements or perception of stereotypes. There was also no discrepancy between the math performance of boys and girls. By the last two months of the school year, however, this changed.

Teachers with high math anxiety were shown to have a significant effect on the math achievement and stereotypes of their female students. Girls with anxious teachers scored lower on math achievement tests at the end of the year than girls with more confident teachers—the more anxious the teacher, the more likely girls were to confirm the stereotype that girls have less math ability when they took the year-end tests. Girls who agreed with the stereotype all had lower math achievement scores than girls who did not agree, as well as lower scores than boys in general, who remained immune to their teachers' influence.

The researchers speculate that the influence of female teachers on their students results from the tendency of children to emulate adults of the same gender. Seeing a math-anxious woman encouraged female students to buy into the stereotype that girls were unskilled at math, thereby allowing themselves to give up on the subject. Meanwhile, boys remained unaware of the influence, suggesting that the problem was not just poor teaching skills, since the boys' math achievement would have suffered were that the case.

The study was somewhat limited in scope, as it didn't look at the effects of all possible gender combinations of teachers and students. There may be, for example, a positive and encouraging relationship between male elementary school teachers and their male students, but the low population of male elementary school teachers (less than 10 percent) makes this hard to study. Females are also more socially conscious than males, so male students' abilities may be more resilient in the face of a math-anxious male teacher.

The fact that over 90 percent of elementary school teachers are female, combined with the high level of math anxiety that many of them transfer to their students, doesn't bode well for girls' future in math. The study's authors acknowledge that the effect was not staggering, and there's plenty of room for influence by other female role models in the students' lives, such as mothers or siblings. Still, the work suggests that when it comes to math, elementary school teachers need, at the very least, to put on a much braver face before they do a math problem on the chalk board.

How exactly are they anxious? If you are qualified enough to teach math, why would anyone be anxious? I have had some great female math teachers and they were no more anxious than their male counter parts. Sounds like a bunch of crap from the "everyone gets a trophy" camp.

The US needs to step up in math and science and quit making excuses. Some it comes from our lazy culture and the fact that no one really cares. Go to Japan, China, or India and you will see a much different picture.

This isn't discussing female MATH teachers. Back in my high school and college days I had them as well and found them to be uniformly competent, and sometimes awesome. However, this article is about elementary school teachers, who as a group tend to be far more of a mixed bag and generally have little specific training in math/science.

The best math teacher I ever had was a woman at a community college. Her ability to teach math was miles better than anyone else I had experienced. It's too bad there aren't more math teachers like her.

This isn't discussing female MATH teachers. Back in my high school and college days I had them as well and found them to be uniformly competent, and sometimes awesome. However, this article is about elementary school teachers, who as a group tend to be far more of a mixed bag and generally have little specific training in math/science.

This. Math isn't a requirement to be an elementary teacher here in Reno, NV. Meaning you can have gone through school and taken nothing but the minimum requirement and still be a teacher.

So if you had math anxiety as a student, you will have math anxiety as a teacher.

My wife is a math instructor at a college, and she is constantly butting heads with the education department. She teaches a class on teaching elementary school math. But many of her students (college juniors and seniors) show up not even being able to *solve* elementary school math problems, let alone understand the concepts deeply enough to teach them. She has to fail half the class sometimes. But the education department is trying to force her to pass these students anyway. Apparently, the department feels that as long as they show up to the class and turn in homework, they should be allowed to become teachers, regardless of their ability.

As a follow up, I was wondering if a more literate person could tell me how to interpret the citation at the bottom of this article:PNAS, 2010. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0910967107How can I use this to find the original article, and would anyone have suggestions as to how to find related articles? Let's assume that I can get access from my university to any necessary databases.A wiki instructional or something could be just as helpful, but I can't come up with useful search terms to find one.

Apparently, the department feels that as long as they show up to the class and turn in homework, they should be allowed to become teachers, regardless of their ability.

Welcome to the current state of education.

I had a few students that received a 55% for the most recent marking period even though they attended class 3 times in 9 weeks, took no tests and turned in absolutely no work.

It's something about "zeros not being fair" or not mathematically sound, apparently. So now everything must be done on a letter grade scale where each letter is centered on the halfway point (ie, A=95, B=85 etc). Any grades lower than 55% are changed to a 55% by the district after the teacher submits them.

In other words, what you describe is unfortunately not an exception, or likely out of line with these students' experiences to this point. But it's what [American] society has collectively decided it wants, so that's what the education system gives them.

While this is certainly of concern, my understanding is that Algebra is still the main issue for women in math; whatever gains are made in the elementary school for getting young girls interested, Algebra ends up turning them away. Evidence suggests this is more about how the subject is taught, than the subject itself. But it is still a major issue.

The US needs to step up in math and science and quit making excuses. Some it comes from our lazy culture and the fact that no one really cares. Go to Japan, China, or India and you will see a much different picture.

PLEASE FIX ARSTECHNICA SO THAT COMMENTS WORK CORRECTLY IN FIREFOX!!! Now, to rewrite (in I.E.)

Its very popular these days to bash Americans, even among Americans themselves. Have you actually been to Japan, China, or India and extensively studied their educational processes first-hand?

I'm not saying that American education doesn't need a massive overhaul (quite the opposite), but remember that many countries only test their top students whereas because of the marketing savvy of the Educational Testing Service virtually EVERY American student takes the SAT, the Pre-SAT, the This-SAT, the That-SAT, etc.

It would work out much better for EVERYONE if there was much LESS emphasis on going to college and MORE emphasis on getting the RIGHT education. Not all high school students are college material. Not all middle school students are high school material. Other countries make a determination much earlier in life about the best educational path for each child. Children that aren't good candidates for higher education would be much better off learning a trade they enjoy and show proficiency for than suffering through high school and maybe even college feeling inferior the entire time.

And as politically incorrect as it is to say, speaking English (in the United States) is a major determining factor for success later in life (this has been proven). This doesn't mean that Spanish-only speaking children are more stupid than their English speaking counterparts and should be treated like second class citizens. It DOES mean that the first step in bringing them up to speed is to make them proficient in English. Without that, the Spanish speaking student suffers and their English speaking classmates don't get the full value of their education because the teacher is overwhelmed trying to deal with children who don't speak English. It isn't fair to either group. It may have to be accepted that children new to English have to be held back a year to catch up in English to other children, but in the end it will be better for everyone. Plainly what we're doing now isn't working.

It's something about "zeros not being fair" or not mathematically sound, apparently. Roll Eyes So now everything must be done on a letter grade scale where each letter is centered on the halfway point (ie, A=95, B=85 etc). Any grades lower than 55% are changed to a 55% by the district after the teacher submits them.

To be fair, that doesn't seem quite the same thing. Now, it's not good that the grading scale bottoms out at 55%. But 55% is still a failing grade, yes? It generally doesn't matter that someone gets a 55% F or a 0% F; they fail the class either way.

What matters is if you earn an F but are given a C. That is in no way acceptable.

Originally posted by Modab:As a follow up, I was wondering if a more literate person could tell me how to interpret the citation at the bottom of this article:PNAS, 2010. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0910967107Thanks!

But I'm getting a message from there that this article hasn't been released to the public yet (and yes I do have access through my institution).

Looking at the most recent PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) issue (which is Janurary 19th 2010, volume 107, number 3,,, and translates into that 10.1073) I don't see the article at all.

Say a student blows off the first semester of a year long class. Does nothing at all. Doesn't show up, doesn't do any work, takes no tests/quizzes/etc. and turns nothing in. Not for a lack of ability, but simply because they don't want to do it.

What's a fair grade for doing nothing and not even bothering to show up? 0%.

However, they are given a 55% for that. The following semester all they need to do is score a 65% to pass the entire class for the year since that averages a 60%, which is considered passing.

Which means that really, all that's actually required is completion of 65% of half of the work and content of the class. Which effectively moves "passing" down to 32.5%.

Personally, I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea that only "getting" 60% of the material is considered mastery. Lowering that bar to roughly 1/3 of the total material doesn't do anyone any favors.

Oh wait, yes it does. Politicians and administrators love it. Makes them look good, because suddenly now everyone is passing!

quote:

What matters is if you earn an F but are given a C. That is in no way acceptable.

This does happen under certain conditions, and is often heavily abused as well.

To the commenters (and potential commenters) who are particularly knowledgeable about the U.S. educational system:Do the results of these sorts of studies ever end up shaping the hiring and training process for teachers? Presumably this particular study can't have much of an impact due to its small scale, but do the conclusions from larger studies tend to get put into practice?

Originally posted by Modab:As a follow up, I was wondering if a more literate person could tell me how to interpret the citation at the bottom of this article:PNAS, 2010. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0910967107How can I use this to find the original article, and would anyone have suggestions as to how to find related articles? Let's assume that I can get access from my university to any necessary databases.A wiki instructional or something could be just as helpful, but I can't come up with useful search terms to find one.

Thanks!

Any time you see a DOI (Digital (document?) Object Identifier) link, you can go to http://dx.doi.org/ and be redirected. For instance, given the DOI here (10.1073/pnas.0910967107)

Originally posted by D_Homerick:To the commenters (and potential commenters) who are involved in the U.S. educational system:Do the results of these sorts of studies ever end up shaping the hiring and training process for teachers? Presumably this particular study can't have much of an impact due to its small scale, but do the conclusions from larger studies tend to get put into practice?

D_Homerick, since most schools are government run I highly doubt they use studies for hiring practices or the principles and school board would get they asses handed to them by teacher's unions.

As far as the results of other studies making it into teacher curriculum, I'd say yes that there will be speakers at educator's conventions, books written, association newsletters, mass emails, etc. all discussing the outcomes of studies like this. Which is sad because most people in general will never investigate the details behind claims to find out if they are bogus or not.

This study in particular seems very bogus. Majority female writers (4 of 5), odd sampling (17 math teachers for 117 students, numbers looked made up and what school system has more than 1 teacher per 7 students), only sampled in one geographic region and the sampling itself is too minuscule for the assertions they are trying to make.

Seems like a bullshit study to me, jumped on by feminists looking to promote their views. Oh, look...female Ars writer too! Gee!

Personally, I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea that only "getting" 60% of the material is considered mastery.

It doesn't. Getting a D in no way demonstrates mastery, and may not even be considered passing. My students have to get at least 70 to pass, which is still pretty low IMHO, but it's better than only requiring 60.

quote:

As far as the results of other studies making it into teacher curriculum, I'd say yes that there will be speakers at educator's conventions, books written, association newsletters, mass emails, etc. all discussing the outcomes of studies like this. Which is sad because most people in general will never investigate the details behind claims to find out if they are bogus or not.

See reform math, which produced a generation of students who have no grasp of basic skills, for an example of how applying new teaching ideas without really thinking about the consequences leads to disaster. A similar brand of idiocy is unfolding in physics, in which it's deemed more important that the student feel good about physics than that they actually know anything (like, say, how to use conservation of energy or add two vectors).

Which means that really, all that's actually required is completion of 65% of half of the work and content of the class. Which effectively moves "passing" down to 32.5%.

Personally, I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea that only "getting" 60% of the material is considered mastery. Lowering that bar to roughly 1/3 of the total material doesn't do anyone any favors.

The other problem with not reporting the 'true' grade (ie. anything from 0 to 100) is that the extent of failure is lost. Someone who consistently scores around 50 to 65 is certainly worrisome, but someone who consistently scores around 20 to 40 requires even more attention. Yet both may get lumped together as an 'F'.

IANAEducator, but I cannot understand why all students, from elementary to college, do not get a uniform 0 to 100 grading system, with the true grades (to the extent that they can be qualitatively measured) reported to the parent or guardian. Why this obfuscating code of A-F, or 0.0-4.0 reporting? What is it about simple percentages that aren't suitable for the job?

This really should have been glaringly obvious. Almost all elementary school math teachers are female, and almost all middle school or high school math teachers are male. Girls get shafted for the entirety of their public school education, and in college, those same girls end up in the same roles as the generation that preceded them, which just perpetuates the problem.

I propose the following as possible solutions:

1) Make a B in calculus a requirement for all college students.

Pros: Everyone with a college degree will be competent in Math, so females with degrees will not be able to pass on anxiety to girls.Cons: Less females may pursue a college degree. Standards to become a teacher may be lowered.

2) Make a B in calculus a requirement for all elementary school teachers.

Pros: No one in a teaching position will pass on anxiety about math to their students.Cons: There will be almost no female elementary school teachers in the short term. There may be a shortage of teachers in general in the short term.

3) Make a B in calculus a requirement to all elementary school teachers who want to teach math.

Pros: No one in a teaching position will pass on anxiety about math to their students.Cons: There will still be almost no female math teachers in the short term.

4) Make it super easy for foreign female math majors to immigrate to this country in order to become math teachers at all levels.

Pros: Fixes the gender issue with math. High skew to female immigrants makes it easier for ars posters to find a date.Cons: Immigrants. This is the USA, and we apparently hate them. We Americans are already worried about the browning of our country that's well underway because of the growing Hispanic population. The last thing we need is more immigrants, particularly from places like India and the middle east. We'd rather be stupid and white than solve problems and be brown. This is related to the reason we eat mostly white bread even though brown bread is more wholesome and overall better, so the scientists say anyway.

Disclaimer: Some of the above proposals, if implemented, might work better than others, if any work at all. They may also be horribly politically incorrect; I apologize in advance. If you're in a position to seriously implement any of the above, I suggest doing more research and studies first, but failing that, choose the last one; it'll be way more interesting and fun for everyone.

Well, in principle is smooths out the noise. Is a 92 really that different from a 95? Probably not.

I wouldn't be opposed to more letters beyond F though, because a 10 is vastly different from a 50.

Agreed on both counts.

I'm a big fan of the A-F scale for grading more subjective things like papers or "performance" tasks where it's really not possible to truly, objectively say "Student 1 and Student 2 both got an "A" on their presentations, but Student 1 scored a 93 while student 2 got a 94."

Instead in those cases I feel grading to a general level of performance is more appropriate as what is an "A", "C" or "F" is quite clear. "B" and "D" tend to fall in between the respective areas. It allows students to not be perfect but still have to meet an objective standard (ie, you must demonstrate w,x,y and z for an "A"). They're not going to be perfect, and just because a student flubs a couple of lines or misses a minor detail doesn't mean an overall "A" effort is going to suffer for that. But it does mean it's difficult to pin an exact point value to the thing.

However for things like factual tests or tasks or procedures with clear right or wrong answers I feel a point system is appropriate, and I also think that the actual score is an important thing to record, as the 'degree of failure or success' can certainly give you a much better picture of a student's standing. There's a huge difference between a student that struggled all year but honestly earned a flat 60% across the board and the student that really earned a 0%/65% but was given a 55% instead of the zero.

Both get the same average in the end, but one is a higher quality student than the other - and it's not at all fair to the one that came by the grade honestly.

Which means that really, all that's actually required is completion of 65% of half of the work and content of the class. Which effectively moves "passing" down to 32.5%.

Personally, I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea that only "getting" 60% of the material is considered mastery. Lowering that bar to roughly 1/3 of the total material doesn't do anyone any favors.

The other problem with not reporting the 'true' grade (ie. anything from 0 to 100) is that the extent of failure is lost. Someone who consistently scores around 50 to 65 is certainly worrisome, but someone who consistently scores around 20 to 40 requires even more attention. Yet both may get lumped together as an 'F'.

IANAEducator, but I cannot understand why all students, from elementary to college, do not get a uniform 0 to 100 grading system, with the true grades (to the extent that they can be qualitatively measured) reported to the parent or guardian. Why this obfuscating code of A-F, or 0.0-4.0 reporting? What is it about simple percentages that aren't suitable for the job?

This comment was edited by dlux on January 26, 2010 02:48

While I agree that we should make the distinction on how badly someone fails, I'm not sure percentages are the way to go (on report cards; internally, they still should be used to calculate the grade that actually goes on there). While a 75% is passing, it means that 1/4 of the work was not done well. An 80% means 1/5 of the work was not done well. However, 75% and 80% look close to 100, so students with those grades will often be told they are doing okay, when in reality, they are far from it. And those who get an 85%, equivalent to a B, are often told they are doing good, when it's not much better than 80% (1/6.67). We need a scale that encourages students to get at least 90%. That's still messing up 1/10 of their work, but at least it's in the realm of, "oh, they just need to be a bit more careful next time". Whether it goes by ESNU, where E is above 95%, S is above 90%, N is above 65% or 75%, and U is everything under, or it's another number scale, that is non-linear with respect to the percentages, I don't know what would be best. However, neither percentages nor A-F grades are ideal.

When my wife (who is good at math) was studying to be an elementary school teacher, she was disturbed by the math anxiety so many of her classmates had. Based on that anecdotal evidence, this is a very real problem.

The study found that when elementary school teachers, who are primarily female, displayed a high level of anxiety about math, that skittishness was transmitted to their female students.

The concept has been known and understood for centuries. In Buddhism, we call it "the oneness of the self and your environment".

Here's my experience in working with kids in an elementary school environment:

I was given the task my first year as a paraprofessional to run a classroom of computers than ran a research-based computer tutoring program. I took on the challenge with relish, confidence and enthusiasm, and never allowed myself not any of the 185 kids that I was tutoring to think that we could not succeed. My method was a combination of classroom instruction techniques in conjunction with the computer program, allowing myself to be the "interface" between the concepts presented to the students and the students themselves, with the ability to pause the program and give one on one instruction. I awarded students for hard work, effort and perseverance, always emphasizing confidence in themselves. After one year, the result was an overall growth of 22.5% in math scores for the whole school.

So, yes, just like in all things in life, attitude really IS everything.

These days, I'm attempting to do the same thing with high school students that far behind, and many of them have severe math deficits. It's even harder trying to teach them integrated algebra and geometry when they haven't even mastered their rudimentary math facts, things that they should have mastered in 4th grade. How they've managed to be passed along through middle school is beyond me. The worst part? For many of these kids, it's far too late to try and "fix" them, and they get further and further behind each year.

Not a single one of my elementary school teachers (all female) had a clue what to do with math, once it progressed beyond addition, subtraction, and integer multiplication.This was especially heinously obvious with fractions, where it took a month to get the concept of dividing basic fractions across to a 4th grade class and the teacher couldn't understand fractions reduced to a simpler form than what the book showed (3/4 rather than 4.5/6, etc).

My first middle school teacher (male) also had little clue what he was doing, but at least tried and actually thought about things when a student presented an alternate answer (rather than dismissing it immediately). That's not to say that males are innately more competent in math, so much as it is to say that a good majority of our teachers are not prepared properly to teach and a single teacher to teach 6 subjects is just a bad situation waiting to happen.If we honestly think elementary school children can't handle walking from class to class for different subjects (double standard, since we do it for music and other art classes as well as PE), have the TEACHERS walk from class to class, to teach different subjects. It would be good for their short attention spans, anyway, to get them out of the class every hour or so.

I can see the arguments for 'smoothing out the noise' (which is a good way to put it), but that can still be accomplished using 0-100. Obviously, grades based on non-quantitative testing are subjective by the teacher doing the grading, but rather than using a code like A-F, which still contains 13 steps from best to what is acknowledged as 'failing', the same approximate granularity can be accomplished by assigning numeric grades in increments of five (70, 75, 80, 85, etc.) My point is to normalize the reporting of achievement without the added layer of obfuscation, and sticking with that system for all forms of grading or ranking (including getting rid of the stupid 4-star vs. 5-star vs. who-knows-what ranking of non-academic items.) If people aren't comfortable about that, they either have a problem with raw numbers in general, or they disagree with the grading/ranking criteria, not the values used.

(Tangent: numeric grades also reinforces the point that people should have a more comfortable relationship with math and numbers. I caught snippets of a TED talk wherein the presenter suggested that calculus should not be the measure of general mathematic proficiency, but instead statistics. I fully agree with his grater point: citizens need a competent understanding of statistics in the real world, for everything from shopping to politics. Unfortunately this is not the case - at least in the US - and the general populace has no tools to evaluate claims made by politicians, marketers, or the media. There's no denying that calculus is a worthwhile endeavor for advanced math, science, and engineering, but to leave everyone else behind without a basic understanding of statistics is a great deficiency in any modern society.)

Not a single one of my elementary school teachers (all female) had a clue what to do with math, once it progressed beyond addition, subtraction, and integer multiplication.This was especially heinously obvious with fractions, where it took a month to get the concept of dividing basic fractions across to a 4th grade class and the teacher couldn't understand fractions reduced to a simpler form than what the book showed (3/4 rather than 4.5/6, etc).

OTOH, I've worked with very competent female teachers that taught math in conjunction with the aforementioned computer program, and helped out with expanding the abilities of students far beyond their grade level. Let's not fall into the trap of generalizing female teachers, even thought they are the norm in primary education. There are many other factors involved in the education of children, and the most prominent is the level of education of their parents and their ability to help and reinforce classroom instruction at home. That's another variable that needs to be put into the mix, as many PARENTS have the same levels of "math anxiety" as teachers, doubling the effect.

Originally posted by dlux:(Tangent: numeric grades also reinforces the point that people should have a more comfortable relationship with math and numbers. I caught snippets of a TED talk wherein the presenter suggested that calculus should not be the measure of general mathematic proficiency, but instead statistics. I fully agree with his grater point: citizens need a competent understanding of statistics in the real world, for everything from shopping to politics. Unfortunately this is not the case - at least in the US - and the general populace has no tools to evaluate claims made by politicians, marketers, or the media. There's no denying that calculus is a worthwhile endeavor for advanced math, science, and engineering, but to leave everyone else behind without a basic understanding of statistics is a great deficiency in any modern society.)

Not to derail the thread, but I find it very interesting that you should bring up statistics. It is one of a handful of relatively common areas in mathematics where I feel my education is sorely lacking. My brain tends to like math and even as a kid I've enjoyed finding out the why's and wherefore's of what I was learning. When I ended up moving into more of an engineering role in my previous job I quickly got lost with the statistics portion. If I end up in that type of work again I'd like to patch that hole in my knowledge.

I haven't seen a lot of primary or secondary school for a long time now, but unfortunately my impression in the last decade hasn't been all that favourable. We've got our first child due in the next few weeks so in a few years time I should be getting a parent's perspective on things. I certainly want to do all I can to help and encourage our children in math, science, and other areas of their education. I also really want their teachers to be able to competently do their part in the classroom.

As far as letter grades vs. percentages I can only add my own personal experience and tastes. I can be a bit of a perfectionist and have often obsesses over those few percentage points. Often, especially when my marks have been high, that fretting wasn't productive. However, I do like to know where I've gone wrong and what mistakes I've made so that I can make them less often in the future. While I'm all for grading, for me one of the most valuable outcomes from a test or exam was to get my paper back so I could see where I need improvement. Handing in a paper and just getting a mark at the end with no other feedback was next to worthless unless I managed to get 100% on the test (no, that didn't happen very often at all).

Hmm. I had no idea there was a gender stereotype working against girls wrt math. My experience (anecdote warning) was that all of the best math students I'd known in the early grades were female. I knew very few guys who excelled at math (at that time I was in fact one of those poor sods).

:shrug: Learn something new everyday I guess.

To add to the topic though: I think the first step to fixing the US school system would be to remove the concept of one teacher/one class. Force topic specialization on teachers even in elementary settings. There is no excuse for a teacher who cannot effectively communicate the basic (grade level dependent) skills for any given subject to a student to be teaching that subject. So if a teacher has anxiety about their ability to perform in math, what are they doing teaching it?

Thanks everybody who helped me find the article!Continuing the topic of: the first step to fixing the US school systemReform the teacher's union that keeps unfit teachers working. While I am not naive enough to believe we can get rid of the union, parents and the general public should be able to pressure them into making important changes to the system if we make enough noise. There are a large number of teachers who are unfit to teach their subjects, and the system has to have the capacity to remove them in order to work. With current tenure rules (firing is impossible after 3 years for the most part), this is impossible.The other half to reform is introducing proper pay to teachers that perform well, and decent pay for those that are performing at least at a mediocre level. While people will argue to the cows come home how to judge this, the money involved has to be upped substantially. The reason meaningful reform hasn't happened is because the Democrats are willing to raise taxes to pay for it, but they aren't willing to take on the Union. The Republicans are more willing to deal with the union, but they won't propose raising taxes for something that isn't related to foreign affairs.

Originally posted by Hairy Gunt:Numeracy is extremely important, but proficiency in mathematics isn't so important.

How is 'numeracy' different from mathematics? Please elaborate.

Numeracy is what you need to function.

It is a limited subset of mathematical concepts.

True, but where do you set the cutoff point? Or putting it another way, how does one define 'mathematics' for the average person?

I contend that the average person should have an understanding of basic algebra, geometry, and, as stated earlier, statistics. Obviously those fields encompass a lot of terrain, but for practical purposes they should include everything necessary to understand basic banking and investing, essential computer operation (storage bytes, network speeds, screen resolutions, etc.), the ability to perform intelligent product/service comparisons and to read spec sheets, and a necessary grounding in statistics to understand claims made by the media, politicians, and scientific reports. If an individual wants to be able to perform basic troubleshooting or construction, entry-level geometry is important as well. I think this goes beyond 'numeracy' and into 'mathematics', but we might be quibbling over semantics at this point.